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JPL/ NASA Chronicles of Discovery: Timeline (1990-2011)

August 10, 1990: Magellan enters orbit around Venus. Over the next four years, it maps 98 percent of the planet’s surface.

October 6, 1990: The U.S. – European Ulysses spacecraft launches a mission to study the Sun and its poles.

October 29, 1991: En route to Jupiter, Galileo makes the first flyby of an asteroid when it passes by Gaspra.

August 10, 1992: The U.S. – French ocean-monitoring satellite Topex/ Poseidon launches.

August 28, 1993: Galileo flies by a second asteroid, Ida, on its way to Jupiter.

December 2, 1993: Shuttle astronauts take a spacewalk to install JPL’s Wide-Field and Planetary Camera 2 in the Hubble Space telescope, compensating for a flaw in the telescope’s main mirror. The instrument allows Hubble to capture remarkable images of galaxies, nebula, planets, and many other celestial objects.

April 9, 1994: A decade after the first shuttle radar imaging mission, the third in the series launches. A JPL instrument is combined with a German-Italian radar system.

February 12, 1997: JPL teams with a Japanese spacecraft launched under the Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry program to make radio observations of the distant Universe.

July 4, 1997: Mars Pathfinder lands, delivering the first mobile rover to another planet, By the final data transmission on September 27, the mission returns 2.3 billion bits of information, including more than 16,500 lander images and 550 rover images.

September 12, 1997: Mars Global Surveyor enters orbit.

October 15, 1997: Cassini launches to travel 6-1/2 years to Saturn, where the European-built Huygens probe will descend to the surface of the shrouded moon Titan.

February 17, 1998: Voyager 1 passes another spacecraft to become the most distant human-made object in space.

October 24, 1998: Deep Space 1 launches on a mission to flight-test advanced technologies, including an ion propulsion system.

February 7, 1999: Stardust launches on a mission to fly past a comet and return samples of comet and interstellar dust to Earth.

June 19, 1999: The Quick Scatterometer satellite launches into Earth orbit to study near-surface ocean winds around the globe.

December 14, 2009: Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launches. It will scan the sky in infrared light, creating a vast catalog of celestial objects.

May 20, 2010: The Mars Exploration Rover project passes a historic longevity record: “Opportunity” rover surpasses the duration record set by the Viking 1 lander of 6 years and 116 days operating on the Martian surface.

September 27, 2010: Cassini begins its second extended mission, named the Cassini Solstice Mission.

November 1, 2010: The giant 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications goes back on line tracking deep space missions after a seven-month upgrade.

November 4, 2010: Deep Impact-EPOXI flies by comet Hartley 2.

December 25, 2010: Mars Odyssey becomes the longest-serving spacecraft at Mars – 3,340 days in orbit.

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Astronomy: To Infinity and Beyond! Welcome to "The Cosmos." I will take you on a journey through our solar system, galaxy, and the Universe! You will be updated with current events in astronomy. Please click on the picture above to visit my blog on poetry, writings, and musings!

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References for photos used from websites can be found under the "References" page. Photo credit: news sites (reference included in post), NASA (most images used), and Google (for artists' view of objects unable to be photographed).